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Biotech Company To Patent Pigs Screenshot-sm 285

Posted by samzenpus from the bring-home-the-bacon dept.
Anonymous Swine writes "Monsanto, a US based multinational biotech company, is causing a stir by its plan to patent pig-breeding techniques including the claim on animals born by the techniques. 'Agricultural experts are scrambling to assess how these patents might affect the market, while consumer activists warn that if the company is granted pig-related patents, on top of its tight rein on key feed and food crops, its control over agriculture could be unprecedented. "We're afraid that Monsanto and other big companies are getting control of the world's genetic resources," said Christoph Then, a patent expert with Greenpeace in Germany. The patent applications, filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization, are broad in scope, and are expected to take several years and numerous rewrites before approval.'"
Social Networks

Facebook Users Get Lower Grades In College 284

Posted by timothy from the but-doodlers-do-fine dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "According to a survey of college students Facebook users have lower overall grades than non-users. The study by Aryn Karpinski, an education researcher at Ohio State University, found that Facebook user GPAs are in the 3.0 to 3.5 range on average, compared to 3.5 to 4.0 for non-users and that Facebook users also studied anywhere from one to five hours per week, compared to non-users who studied 11 to 15 or more hours per week. Karpinski emphasized that correlation does not equal causation and that the grades association could be caused by something else. 'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.' One hypothesis is that students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook or that students who use the social networking site might also spend more time on other non-studying activities such as sports or music. 'It may be that if it wasn't for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.' As for herself, Karpinski said she doesn't have a Facebook account, although the co-author of the study does. 'For me, I think Facebook is a huge distraction.'"
The Almighty Buck

Ponzi Schemes Multiply On YouTube 346

Posted by Soulskill from the if-you-agree-paypal-five-dollars-to-the-poster-above-you dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "While it's probably not true that P. T. Barnum was the originator of the saying 'there's a sucker born every minute,' the proliferation of nearly 23,000 Ponzi schemes on YouTube, with an astounding 59,192,963 views, proves that the sentiment is still alive and well. The videos usually don't ask for money directly, but send viewers to web sites where they are urged to sign up for the 'gifting program,' usually for fees ranging from $150 to $5,000. One of the videos recently added on YouTube featured Bible quotes, pictures of stacks of money and a testimonial from a man who said he not only got rich from cash gifting, but also found true happiness and lost 35 pounds. 'They make it seem like it's legal and an easy way to make money, but it's nothing more than a pyramid scheme,' says Better Business Bureau spokeswoman Alison Southwick. Some of the videos claim that because it's 'gifting,' it's somehow legal. 'They talk about "cash leveraging," whatever that means, and other vague marketing talk,' says Southwick, but the basic scheme is that participants are told to recruit more people who will put in more money. 'It's just money changing hands,' says Southwick, 'and it always goes to people at the top of the pyramid.' A spokesman for YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., said the company doesn't comment on individual videos."

Comment R&D in pharmacogenetics (Score 1) 123

by unifyingtheory (#27060799) Attached to: Roundup of Microsoft Research At TechFest 2009
Microsoft has given my university a grant to help develop software in the field of phamacogenetics. It's for developing a program that will identify interactions between a person's individual genetics and the medications they are prescribed. It's supposed to revolutionize the field of pharmacy. I just hope it doesn't have to reboot after every patient.

Comment This is NOT a vaccine! (Score 1) 177

by unifyingtheory (#26975177) Attached to: Steps Toward a Universal Flu Vaccine

The challenge here is to develop a vaccine that causes the body to produce antibodies that it would NOT produce in response to an infection. This vaccine must cause the body to produce antibodies that are more general than those it would produce for any specific flu, but still specific enough that they won't attack anything beneficial.

The "vaccine" from the article is not actually a vaccine. It is a medication. A vaccine acts as you described, causing the body to produce antibodies to pathogens. However, what the article describes is actually an antibody produced outside the body, and when administered should not typically invoke an immune response. There are already many drugs like this on the market.

These drugs often have severe side effects are are not first-line therapy so the clinical use of this (in the extremely unlikely event that it makes it through clinical trials and is approved) will be very small, possibly reserved for the immunocompromised (AIDS patients, bone-marrow transplant patiets etc).

[I'm in pharmacy school.]
Google

Submission + - Google to Change Chrome EULA (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by unifyingtheory
unifyingtheory writes:

Google's Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, now tells Ars Technica that the company tries to reuse these licenses as much as possible, "in order to keep things simple for our users." Ward admits that sometimes "this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don't apply well to the use of that product" and says that Google is "working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome."

It looks like Google's new Chrome EULA will turn out not so evil after all.

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